Saturday Marathon Session was Filled with Athels

People drove from Michigan, Pittsburgh and Lancaster to join our game on Saturday.  We rented a conference room at a hotel ($100) for a 12pm to 12am time period.  Which I've already mentioned on Google+ has given me an idea about possibly starting an OSRcon here.  But one step at a time.

Dwayne from the Gamers Closet brought his amazing gaming prop, a Keep, Inn and Crypt beneath all molded from Hirst molds.  He did it all by hand and it is just incredible.  He did all the decorations, rugs, pictures, sconces, ect... and it really impressed me.

Dwayne is setting up our initial encounter at the Wulfgar Keep.

Dwayne created an adventure around his setting.  The gist, this keep is within a border barony that joined the Kingdom 25 years ago.  This barony is based off a Viking culture.  The Baron is enamored of the kingdom's ways which is in opposition of many his subjects.  We decided to use GURPS 4th Edition.  Rob made up characters for everyone before the session.  Now Rob will probably post his own version of what happened, but I have documented proof of what occurred.  All he has is a first hand account skewed to protect his dignity.  You'll only find truth here. 

Our group consisted of:
*Athelstan: Cleric of Mytria, Healing - (You are already here)
*Athelbert: Guard - Josh (he too cool to have his own blog)
Belafor: Cleric of Thor: only viking in out party.  He was blue. - Ken (Rusty Battle Axe)
Alia Rose: Scout, yeah let's go with that - Kelly Anne (Aliarose)
Sir Ellestan: A Foot Knight *snicker* - Rob (Bat in the Attic)
Cutie: Lego Knight - Gregory
* This became the running joke of the session.  How the game was full of Athels, from Athelburg.  It was funny at the time.  

A shot of the interior of the keep.  You can see all the detail Dwayne put into his keep.

Rewind a bit before we go to the keep.  We are gathered to help the border barony, we requisition supplies and in the morning when we go to pick them up there is a captain there that is going with us.  He and Sir Ellestan get into measuring the manhood battle (there was a lot of measuring tape not used).  We go on the road, its a 15 day trip to the keep.  Before we leave Sir Ellestan also gets a necklace from a powerful member of the mage guild to keep an eye on his progress.  A sleeping man talisman that allows communication between the two of them.  Its supposed to work while he sleeps, but can work when Sir Ellestan is awake.

While Sir Ellestan was on guard duty he got sucked into a dream conference and when he awoke from his meeting the captain he'd been measuring against was dead.  Throat slit.  Dead.  The blue Belafor cast See Secrets and found a pair of boot prints next to the body that were hidden by magic.

So no one slept well when Sir Ellestan was on guard duty.

We sent the body back to town when we reached a village then continued onto the keep.

Our group (bottom right) approaches the keep.

We met the baron who was very happy to have us.  I would even say he kissed our asses.  *smooch*  He explained a few people have gone missing and then his niece went missing.  Long story short, he asked for help.  No one around here seemed to know much or at least wasn't saying much.

Now Dwayne has this other prop...

Out of game knowing is okay...really.

So I used me clerical hoodedness and asked is there any weird location or strange temples in the area that might guide us.  Well wouldn't you know there was.  The Blood Oracle was down the road a bit, but no one goes there.  Of course they don't.  It's the Blood Oracle!

It was a day's walk away from the keep.  It was located in a dense thicket and we were told to only approach it from the front.  No explanation why.  With our group I was sure we would find out why.

BUT...something happen along the way to the Blood Oracle.

The tree across the mountain pass ambush trick. 

We were ambushed by orcs who blocked the way with a tree.  Remember, this is GURPS, not 1 HD meatbags that populate most games.  You need to take this serious and there were a lot of them.  We used our best and only tactic, mass confusion, one charging ahead, another running away, a few in between and me trying to dodge arrows while I kept people standing.  At one point Athelbert tried to ram an orc off the mountain side.  Great if is works.  It didn't.  Sir Ellestan caught him before he did a Wild E Coyote.  In the end we survived.

Then we arrived at the Blood Oracle.

The power of the Blood Temple caused my camera go out of focus. 

The oracle invited us in only after we defeated her guardians.  Okay sure.  Bring them on.  In Harryhausen fashion skeletons rose from the earth and attacked.  I would have been disappointed if they hadn't.

This is where everyone got polite, "No, no after you."

Sir Ellestan decided to go around the temple and got a lesson on when someone tells you to go through the front door of the Blood Oracle, you don't try to backdoor her....

It's a BYOB party at the Blood Temple.  Bring Your Own Blood.

Skeletons and nearly invincible plant monsters.  They were the ones guarding the sides of the temple that Sir Ellestan tried to not merge with.  As you can see there are many more skeletons on the ground than party members.

The Blood Oracle forbids skinny dipping.

We got inside the temple.  We slipped past a fat little imp by answering his riddle.  Then encountered this pool monster.  All we needed to do was throw in a coin, but instead Athelbert cannonballed in and nearly drowned.  But he didn't.  He's such an Athel.  (See how the joke works?  Its funny really.)

We discovered the missing people were in the crypts below the Keep.  Some shadow lord had them.  Crap.   Back we go.

*FAST FORWARD*

After some debate at the keep, the Baron's brother really didn't want us going down into the crypts.  Lots of arguing.  Needed to be persuasive.  We were.  Went into the crypts below and got another reveal.  The crypts beneath the keep and inn!

It's just a fantastic prop.  Just so cool.

So we get into the crypts and...

We get attacked by the Baron's men and his brother.  They've been sacrificing their own people to the Shadow Lord to gain power to expel the evil influence of the kingdom. 

What followed was an array of awesomely horrible rolls.  Rob rolled a lot of critical misses.  I have the proof.

In GURPS you only want to see this when enemy is rolling. 

Rob will tell you another story, but I have more proof.

That's Sir Ellestan on his back, Rob's guy.  The awesome guy in red is my guy saving the day.

The last battle was a collection of critical misses.  Even when the enemies had no defense.  All we needed to do was hit and we would critically miss.  In the end we won the battle, but we did not save the people.  We only managed to uncover the heinous plot. 

It was a fantastic adventure, the best prop set I've got the play on and it was a great day.  We played for 9 hours.  First marathon session I've played in for a long time.  We were out of the hotel by 10pm and got something to eat.

Ken bowing down before Dwayne for running such a cool adventure.  "I'm not worthy."

Rusty Battle Axe Presents : Game Mastering In Second Position

Years ago I was taking guitar lessons with this amazing guitar instructor when this little life-changing episode happens:

 

We are playing the blues, with me taking the lead,  and he says, “Now switch to second position.” I stopped playing. I had no idea what he was talking about. And I had no idea that this would be the most pivotal moment in my guitar-playing life.

 

I had become very adept at playing the minor pentatonic scale—throwing in double stops, ghost notes, bends, etc. etc.—but all in the first position. I didn’t know there was a second position. Or a third. Or a fourth. Or a fifth.  And so he taught me these four new positions—same scale, different starting points, and told me to play those and NOT the first position. Not playing the first position was like losing my ability to speak and to express myself. I fumbled around on the guitar like I had been handed it for the first time. It was frustrating, aggravating, heart-breaking. I wanted to quit. And yet, after a few weeks, I found that I learned new ways to express myself and my playing made several huge leaps. But the initial move from first position to second position was like learning to play guitar all over again, frustrating and disorientating.

 

I had a similar experience as Game Master this past Monday. To be sure, it was not nearly as dramatic as frustrating as the guitar experience. Our Monday session was, in fact, a fair amount of fun. But I was definitely out of my comfort zone. First position game mastering for me is that approach to play that has come be called “sandbox.” I had never even used a module (not one) until two years ago…all I had was a big made up world with made up people, places and things.

 

So now I am GMing for Dwayne, Rob and Tim and I decided to try something very different for myself—to not only use modules—but a complete adventuring arc. We are using “Splinters of Faith” from Frog God Games. It’s good stuff, but very different stuff than I am used to. Second, nay, third position stuff for me.

 

I am probably more casual about my gaming than many who prowl the blogosphere. Gaming is less an obsession and more of an escape, one of the few activities when I completely lose myself and my cares and simply have fun. But I found it difficult to lose myself with a different approach to GMing, knowing that if the players miss the Thing A and Thing B and Thing C in Module 1, there is no point in even opening Module 2. And I am already losing sleep about them getting to Module 3. Trying to find ways to help the players achieve clarity while avoiding blatant and constant railroading is going to be an interesting—and new—challenge for me as GM. Despite the bit of anxiety, I am pumped about the challenge and even more so about the payoff that might come from gaming from a different angle. I don't try to be the best RPG player, GM, etc...I just play to relax, but I am thinking that once I get used to this, GMing in "second position" will be just as much fun and I'll be the better player for it.

A Rusty Battle Axe Catch-Up Post

Hey, boys and girls.

First of all, thanks to Tim for allowing me to post occasionally on his blog. If he is the host, I must be the parasite. Maybe I’ll change my blog handle to The Rusty Tapeworm.

Secondly, I apologize for my rather abrupt departure from the blogosphere. Yes, I had some concerns about blogging and the public nature of my job, but ultimately the decision to stop blogging came down to time and priorities. Both of my parents have had serious health issues this year and I had some health things, too. On the plus side, I made a decision at the beginning of the year to whip my butt (and the rest of me) into shape and I am well on my way to being healthy, fit, and at my playing weight. However, the better shape I get into, the more time it takes to move to the next level. That, along with some new music endeavors and playing RPGs twice a week most weeks has pretty much consumed my waking hours (and some of the sleeping ones as well). Hence, my decision to cut out the blogging.

I thought about leaving up my old blog without updates, but I had unwisely posted too much related to my identity and my job and so eliminating the actually blog was tied to work concerns. Thanks to the dark magic of the Internet, my posts are out there in the ether forever, but at least the actual blog is gone and it makes it tougher for people to randomly stumble across information.

As Tim has graciously offered Gothridge Manor as a place to post my occasional mindless drivel, I’ll be posting here occasionally.

What I Am Thinking About (RPGs)
Tim, Dwayne and Rob have dropped a few hints that I may up next as GM after we are done with our current adventuring in Rob’s Majestic Wilderlands. I was hoping that Tim would be up next and we’d be doing Hackmaster (4th edition, I think). However, if I am GM and we stick with the general fantasy RPG, I had the following thoughts (and here I am looking for feedback, resources, etc):

1. Continue with our S&W theme and create a campaign that combines fantasy, the Medieval Central Asia (i.e. the Mongols), and some sort of post-apocalyptic thing.
2. Continue with our S&W theme and pick up one of S&W campaign settings on LuLu. I see that there is a growing list. Anybody familiar with any of them? Read any reviews?
3. Same as #1, using Castles & Crusades as the base system (well, my highly house-ruled version of C&C). The plus side is that I already have a lot of the work done. The downside is less sharing of stuff via a blog, PDFs or LuLu if I use C&C.
4. The same as #1 (or #3) using Byzantium as my base motif.
5. Some sort of Underdark that would be connected to the Majestic Wilderlands.

The advantage of all of these, except for #2, is that I don’t have to buy anything. With #2, I’d have the relatively small expense of picking up a campaign book, but that expense could grow, as some of the settings already have supplements. I'd have to do some research and work on the other ideas, but I have a lot of background materials in my library already.

Any thoughts about these options? I'm especially curious to hear from Tim, Rob and Dwayne.

It's good to be back. Thanks, Tim!

Cool Announcement Rusty's Return

Old Rusty Battle Axe is itching to return to do a little blogging and he ask to be a guest blogger on my blog. I said no, but after he paid me a substantial amount of money and a free pizza I agreed. So look out for the return of Rusty. I heard he's got some new critters in the mix and his insights into gaming are always interesting.

Welcome back Rusty!